The problem is political. Is the solution technical?

The world is becoming increasingly urban, with over half of the world’s total population now residing in cities. While urban areas offer many economic and livelihood opportunities, they are increasingly characterised by growing inequality. In South Africa, both former homelands and peri-urban areas have been severely neglected in terms of health care and services, resulting in very poor-quality care and extreme discrepancies between rural and urban health statistics. Yet, there is recognition of the need to address peri-urban sexual and reproductive health (SRH) in South Africa.

South African adolescents experience very high levels of pregnancy, due to uneven gender relations, limited comprehensive sexuality education, and poor access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services, including quality contraception options. Poverty and place of residence strongly affect outcomes of adolescent sexual health in South Africa. While it is recognised that women and girls living in low-income residential areas are negatively affected in relation to many aspects of health, including SRHR, very little information is available on health within peri-urban cities and on the interconnections between poverty, place and health. Given this, we set out to understand how ICTs in general, and mHealth in particular, might provide new ways of addressing adolescent sexuality, reproductive health and place in South Africa.

Mobile phones are ubiquitous in South Africa, including in rural, peri-urban and slum contexts. However, investment in infrastructure tends to be in middle class areas where those inhabiting the spaces pay for use, and South Africa is renowned for its high data costs. By contrast, peri-urban and township areas suffer from inadequate access to services, including poor network coverage, weak satellite signals, insufficient bandwidth and limited voice capacity due to congestion and demand. As high unemployment causes a lack of security, women do not carry mobile phones for fear of being attacked and robbed. In some instances women share mobile phones. Rural areas are plagued by uneven conditions of access: female-headed households have poor access to mobile phones, poor satellite reception, no broadband, high data costs, lack of infrastructure as well as health, education and transport inequalities. In general, women and adolescent girls also have less time to access ICTs due to the gendered division of labour and additional domestic burdens. It is also difficult, and often unsafe, to access internet cafes and other public places where ICTs might be freely available. Inequality in ICT access thus maps the pattern of apartheid inequality.

There are also constraints in terms of electricity, language, cost and design - as one responded said, ‘Space is not an issue, rather it is cost’. Patterns of inequality cannot be addressed simply through access. Special policy measures are needed to support infrastructural and other developments in rural areas, inner-city slums and peri-urban areas, but if left to market forces, these areas will remain under-resourced. Yet, as no such policy prescriptions exist, most technical interventions make no attempt to deal with this. For example, although the National Department of Health (NDOH) is aware of the challenges of rural and peri-urban health for women and adolescent girls, MomConnect – its new national Maternal and Child Health programme – does not address high-risk HIV-pregnancies in peri-urban areas, or offer ways of ensuring transport and places for safe delivery in rural areas. It was, as one member of the task force informed us, ‘too complicated to add any nuance at this stage’. Thus MomConnect deals with questions of space only in terms of connectivity. Implementers working with the NDOH argue that ‘technically on paper, there is no area [in South Africa] without connectivity’. While recognising that connectivity may sometimes mean climbing a hill to receive a signal – and putting aside the mental image of pregnant women climbing hills to read their pregnancy-related SMS messages – ‘MomConnect will deal with it by hoping that there is a facility to receive a signal and that women may have to try different sim cards and perhaps change their service providers’.

As technology improves and programmes expand, the challenges of addressing place-related health issues change. Increasingly, content is being dispersed to mobile phones throughout Africa, so it is not always possible to link subscribers to particular countries or places. As many SRHR topics – abortion, diverse sexual orientations and gender identity, sex work, adolescent sexuality, condoms – are highly politicised and possibly banned, implementers focus on neutral, uncontentious topics and health-related facts. As one implementer, running an Africa-wide, sexual health social networking forum for young people, commented: ‘What I did as a better-than-nothing solution is I hired an international sexual health advisor to produce information as neutrally as possible’. Yet, implementers still come up against place-related challenges: ‘I wrote a manual about being tested for sexual diseases, but found that the tests were not offered… Place is the biggest missing puzzle piece in our service’.

The problem is political – rural, peri-urban, and inner-city areas are underserviced because of past historical injustice, because the poor live in these areas, because there are no policy prescriptions forcing cell phone operators to provide technology and services to these areas, and because the poor have no purchasing power. Poor women’s and adolescents’ health as experienced in these areas is not eye-catching – gender-based violence, abortion, adolescent rape – and their rights to challenge these experiences are difficult, politically-sensitive topics which do not buy votes. Nor are they easily addressed through the sale of m-health products. The challenge of adolescents’ and women’s SRHRs in rural, peri-urban, and inner-city areas is political. Yet, for many, the solution proposed is often technical.

Gender equality and Sustainability: STEPS members contribute to new UN Women report

STEPS Centre members have contributed to a major United Nations report that highlights the deep connections between gender equality and sustainable development, as the world moves towards a post-2015 framework.

The World Survey on the role of women in development 2014: Gender equality and sustainable development is the latest in UN Women's flagship series, published every five years. Its conceptualisation was led by Melissa Leach, former STEPS director and now Institute of Development Studies Director; Lyla Mehta, STEPS Centre Water & Sanitation theme convenor; with assistance from Preetha Prabhakaran.

This year’s report highlights the fundamental links between gender equality and pathways to sustainability, and recommends concrete policy actions to move towards an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable future, in which all women and girls, men and boys enjoy their human rights.

Pathways and gender
The framing of the report draws centrally on the STEPS Centre's Pathways Approach, outlining a 'gendered pathways approach' which unites the challenges of working for environmental sustainability and gender equality. Melissa Leach has written a STEPS blog explaining the background to this thinking.

The report criticises dominant development models that support particular types of underregulated market-led growth, which rely on unequal power relations between women and men, at the same time as promoting the overexploitation of natural resources and the pollution of climates, land and oceans. Alternative pathways and trajectories, responding to these problems, are suggested in a number of areas such as the green economy, care, food security and investment.

The report also warns against stereotypes of women as ‘sustainability saviours’ and instead calls for approaches which recognise women’s rights, knowledge and values, and ensure their proper role in decision-making.

The report will be presented to the Second Committee of the General Assembly on Monday 20 October, followed by a panel discussion (pdf) about the key issues raised. Panellists will include, among others, Melissa Leach and Hilal Elver (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food).

Find out more

• Blog: Why gender equality and sustainable development are inextricably linked by Melissa Leach
• Read the report: World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2014: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development
• The STEPS Pathways Approach: video and publications
• Post-2015: resources from the STEPS Centre

Why gender equality and sustainable development are inextricably linked

As the world moves towards Sustainable Development Goals for the post-2015 era, there is emerging debate about how target-setting and implementation might integrate across the 17 goals proposed by the Open Working Group (OWG) so that the inextricable links between, say, climate change, water and food are properly addressed. Meanwhile, feminists and others rightly celebrate that goal 5 ('Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls') survived the fraught, politicised OWG process.

But while retaining this as a 'standalone' goal is a victory that may guard against the perils of gender mainstreaming and marginalisation, arguably the integration of this with the implementation of the other SDGs is the most important task of all.

As a major United Nations report launched on 20^th October argues, gender equality must be integral to sustainable development. This is the latest in the flagship series of five-yearly World Survey on the Role of Women in Economic Development reports, prepared by UN Women. I had the privilege, together with IDS and STEPS Centre colleagues Lyla Mehta and Preetha Prabhakaran, of leading its conceptualisation. This included authoring the background conceptual framing chapter laying out a 'gendered pathways approach', and working with international feminist scholars to shape contributions in areas where gender-sustainability intersections are biting hard.

Interlocked pathways
The report shows how the effects of unsustainable patterns of development often intensify gender inequalities, as women and girls are disproportionately affected by economic, social and environmental shocks and stresses.

It argues that around many issues – whether work and industrial production, population and reproduction, food and agriculture, or water, sanitation and energy – dominant development pathways have often contributed to both unsustainability and gender inequality. Both are produced by development models that support particular types of under-regulated market-led growth and the persistence of unequal power relations between women and men.

Such pathways rely on and reproduce gender inequalities, for instance by exploiting women's labour and unpaid care work. They also produce environmental problems, as market actors seek and secure profit in ways that rely on the overexploitation of natural resources and the pollution of climates, land and oceans. As troubling intersections of unsustainability and gender inequality threaten or exceed planetary boundaries around climate change, biodiversity and pollution, so shocks, stresses and feedbacks may undermine gendered rights and capabilities even further.

But the reverse is also possible: gender equality and sustainability can powerfully reinforce each other in alternative pathways. Women's knowledge, agency and collective action are often central to these, whether in managing local landscapes, adapting to climate change, producing and accessing food, or securing sustainable water, sanitation and energy services. We see this in examples where women are fully involved in forms of local forest governance that deliver both livelihood and conservation benefits, as Bina Agarwal has traced, and where networks of grass-roots women leaders are working to scale up capacity to reduce vulnerabilities to climate change in their communities.

For pathways to be truly sustainable and advance gender equality and the rights and capabilities of women and girls, those whose lives and well-being are at stake must be involved in leading the way, through community groups, women's organizations and other forms of collective action and engagement – supported by appropriate forms of investment and public services.

Women as 'sustainability saviours'? Beyond stereotypes to a relational view
However, a simple ‘win-win’ relationship between gender equality and sustainability cannot be assumed. Indeed, a policy focus on women can risk casting them as 'sustainability' saviours' in ways that stereotype their roles in relation to the family, the community and the environment. Such responses often add 'environment' to women's already heavy unpaid care and work burdens, without conferring rights, resources and benefits. Power imbalances in gender relations shape whether women's actions and work translate into the realization of their capabilities. And gender is always and everywhere cross-cut by other, intersecting power relations and inequalities, whether around class or ethnicity, age or place.

Hence analysis of interactions, tensions and trade-offs between different dimensions of gender relations and of sustainability is needed, along with attention to the structural foundations of gender discrimination and struggles against this. Recent policy attention to women and girls, from campaigning around the 'girl effect' to debates around the UK's Girl Summit earlier this year, while laudable in many respects, often lacks this relational perspective. Instead, women and girls are treated as individual victims, saviours or development beneficiaries in ways that may entrench stereotypes, while ultimately failing to empower. If goal 5 is to do its vital integrative work for the SDGs and the post-2015 agenda, then attention to gendered power relations, in all their rich, intersecting variety, must remain centre stage.

by Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies

Find out more
UN Women: World Survey on the Role of Women in Economic Development 2014
The STEPS Centre's Pathways Approach: video, briefings and book

Pictures:

• Portraits of a woman, Lukolela, Democratic Republic of Congo, by Ollivier Girard (Flickr, cc-by-nc-nd)
• Women from Lumanti (Thankot, Nepal) participate in awareness raising session. Photo: OpenIdeo

Competing narratives on sustainable agriculture: what is the future that women want?

While the Multi-Stakeholder Conference on Agricultural Investment, Gender and Land in Africa aimed to explore models of responsible and gender equitable investment, many conference discussions centered on the ideal types of business models, responsible governance and proactive policies to achieve greater gender equality. There was a large elephant lurking in the room, however, that could not be ignored: the definition of sustainable agriculture and its implications for women.

One view sees the expansion of commercial agriculture and high input agricultural value chains as the only way forward — a “green revolution” offering promising opportunities for smallholders to farm as a business. The other side passionately disagrees with this obsession with value chains and emphasises that agriculture is an activity intimately connected with the earth — ecological issues such as the long-term fertility of the soil cannot be ignored.

As this debate continued passed the parallel session where it emerged, what women themselves actually want became a central question. Women may not want to be driven into high value market chains. Women may instead want to achieve greater resiliency in food crop production for their families and communities under principles that preserve the long-term viability of their soil. On the other hand, a woman on poor, flood-prone land may prefer water-hungry sugarcane that will not be unpredictably destroyed, as her staple crops are all to often.

Proponents of opposing views may focus on different evidence and impressions. For example, a recent-meta study of organic compared to conventional yields published in Nature found that organic yields are 5% to 34% lower depending on the crop, management practices and soil (Seufert et al. 2012). Evidence such as this could be pointed to as a trade off between high productivity and environmental stewardship.

Advocates of the alternative stand behind the conclusions of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development, a 3-year, multi-stakeholder, collaborative effort. The assessment strongly underscores that we must view “farming communities, farm households, and farmers as producers and managers of ecosystems.” [underlining in the original document] (Synthesis Report Summary, UNEP 2009).

This debate that surfaced calls on delegates to reflect: what is our definition of sustainable agriculture? Are there really two competing views here between maximizing yields and economic objectives versus care for the environment and local food production? Or is there a harmonious way to pursue multiple objectives? How do we listen to the voice small producers themselves, and especially women that provide much of the farm labour? How can people be empowered to make their own informed choices about what vision of agricultural investment suits their needs? These are all questions I would challenge all the sectors represented in this conference to explore honestly and in terms of practical considerations for how we invest in women and agriculture.

By Vera Rocca, Carleton University/Future Agricultures Consortium

What does the International Year of Family Farming mean for women?



Subsistence farmer family from Brong-Ahafo, Ghana
by farmingmatters on Flickr (by-nc-sa)

By Christine Okali
The year 2014 has been declared the International Year of Family Farming by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). Its objective is ‘to raise the profile of family farming and smallholder farming by focusing world attention on its significant role in eradicating hunger and poverty, providing food security and nutrition, improving livelihoods, managing natural resources, protecting the environment, and achieving sustainable development, in particular in rural areas’.

In FAO’s definition, family farming ‘includes all family-based agricultural activities, and it is linked to several areas of rural development. Family farming is a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production which is managed and operated by a family and predominantly reliant on family labour, including both women’s and men’s.’

FAO adds further explanation as to why family farming is important:

• ‘Family and small-scale farming are inextricably linked to world food security.
• Family farming preserves traditional food products, while contributing to a balanced diet and safeguarding the world’s agro-biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources.
• Family farming represents an opportunity to boost local economies, especially when combined with specific policies aimed at social protection and well-being of communities.’

It is not often that such an explicit link is made between smallholders or small-scale farming, and family production, even when the agricultural policy focus is on subsistence production and/or household consumption. As a policy declaration, this could be interpreted as a bold move to focus agricultural research and development on the people involved - with a view to enhancing their level of commitment to agriculture, food production and food security, and care of the environment.

But what does this mean for women in sub-Saharan Africa? What have we learnt from feminist critiques of policies focused on farm families, their farming activities and their links with broader political and economic processes?

Rural families and the organisation of farming

The functioning of households and families can be, and has been, taken for granted when devising policies. Reference might be made to households and families, and possibly simply to ‘farmers’. But what is hidden from view is what these domestic institutions actually look like. Their composition, how they behave, even why and how they might perform the roles listed in FAO’s description, and especially the aspirations and expectations of the individual family/ household members - and how they see farming and related activities fitting into their lives as a whole - remain obscure.

However, as Razavi (2009), and Prügl et al (2013) argue, in order for family farming policies to be effective it is essential to tease out what goes on inside these domestic structures - who contributes what to sustain them, how resources are allocated and shocks dealt with, and how they respond to the whole raft of policies that affect their lives, from agriculture to education, health and social welfare.

Inequalities (or simply differences?) in women’s and men’s – often husbands’ and wives’ – access to land, fertiliser, seeds and credit have been at the centre of gender discourse (focused especially on women), about the organisation of family farming since the 1970s. While the apparent inequities in tenure arrangements are seen by some to create overall economic inefficiencies, others focus on the disadvantages for women. They might argue that these gender inequities or differences are in themselves the source of inefficiencies, since women lack the incentives to invest in their individual – separate – agricultural enterprise(s).

In contrast to this view, and relevant to the issues being raised here, a much smaller group of feminists argue that these differences may be part of a larger and joint set of interests, even if these are inequitably distributed (Jackson 2003; Whitehead and Kabeer 2001). For example, the fact that men’s crops might receive more labour and fertiliser inputs could be part of a whole set of arrangements that privilege household heads yet may pay off, not just for themselves but for all household members, over time.

It might also be pointed out that the focus on farming obscures the impacts of wider reciprocity between women and men, on who is doing what at any given moment. This is especially likely to be the case where agricultural production is only one part, possibly even one small part, of what rural households and families in 2014 are doing to sustain their individual and household/family livelihoods.

The complexity of family relations, and the possible exchanges between individual family members are provided in a project case study report by Patricia Ladipo published in the early 1990s (Ladipo 1991). The exchanges detailed by Ladipo definitely cross the boundaries between types of goods/needs and timeframes (p.47), and demonstrate the necessity of cooperation between spouses (and others) if the welfare of all household members is to be maintained (p.49).

Ladipo’s analysis relates to changes linked with the introduction of yellow maize for livestock feed in 10 villages in Western Nigeria in the 1970s. The analysis points to broken links when expected tasks were not completed by one or the other actor/player: in this particular case, by women challenging male expectations of free labour for shelling a commercial yellow maize crop – a contribution that lay outside the local norms of exchange between spouses. The full short and long term implications – for the women, the men, and for the communities as a whole – of the introduction of yellow maize, which was not part of existing exchanges and related obligations, can only be appreciated from reading the full agricultural extension project history from 1972 to the mid-1990s.

The connectedness of households and families

Feminists might have been more successful in revealing the internal workings of families and households than in identifying and analysing changes in household and family forms over time as Razavi (2009). However, there is widespread agreement that the most significant shift in this rural world of families and households has been in terms of livelihood diversification and outmigration, with outmigration possibly being part of the diversification process itself, or more simply the outcome of historical processes as reported for Southern Africa. How far the ‘transgeographical’ families reported by Thebe (2014) in Zimbabwe, Thebe and Rakotje (2013) in Lesotho, and O’Laughlin (1998) in Botswana, with their specific livelihood and economic diversification strategies, challenge traditional territory-bound units of analysis such as the farm family and reflect the future for many areas, remains to be seen.

While Thebe and Rakotje are reporting on changes since the 1990s in the demand for housing in the growing settlements around urban Maseru, they argue that this and the related non-farming interests of these households is working against the general push by the donor community for small-farm agriculture as a strategy to reduce poverty at the household level. In other words, the donor push to support family farms and agricultural livelihoods is at odds with the reality of livelihood diversification within and across space.

Rural, and especially agricultural planning assumptions about unitary and bounded households, and territory- bound livelihoods, have been the subject of criticism for some time to little or no effect.

Household Typologies: Missing Men (O’Laughlin 1998) and women’s interests

Athough feminists have revealed much that goes on between senior men and women and junior men, both within households, and between households and other domestic institutions, far less is known about the behaviour of female household heads and what goes on within their households. This paucity of information (beyond their purported small size and poverty – ‘Fable or fact?’ see Sylvia Chant, 2003), and diversity, seems problematic given the reported increasing feminisation of rural Africa and this commitment to family farming.

Is it presumptuous to conclude that women, and female headed households will rely on and invest in the natural resource base? One of the lessons from the Southern Africa research would seem to be that it is indeed presumptuous. Not only do non-residents have interests in the land, but also rural residents may receive remittances from their successful migrant family members, in addition to assistance from other kin. They might equally have other interests, especially food processing and trading.

Although the FAO’s vision for the Year of Family Farming does not state that women will be the future family farmers – perhaps engaging in climate smart agriculture, conservation agriculture and so on to achieve the vision – there is evidence to suggest that women will be a significant proportion of the population of small farmers in many locations, even though men may still be there. One thing is certain, it is not possible to take women’s cooperation in all of this for granted.

The Ladipo case study provides some insight into this from a different perspective. The occupational ladder for the women who feature in this case shows them moving from less to more capital intensive, and decreasingly labour intensive, activities. They began their income-earning lives by working as hired labour, moved slowly to selling cooked food, to engaging in rural petty trade, and then to more distant trading, and finally, possibly, to farming commercially on their own account. When in 1976 a child nutrition program was started in the villages, the women requested something ‘for themselves’, to make food processing easier and to build capital. With advice, they built their own cooperative and acquired a maize sheller, and eventually adopted a high-yielding white maize for commercial production, which they controlled.

Women’s increasing engagement with commercial farming and/or other capital-building later in life has been reported by others (Seur; Mckenzie; Schroeder; Okali and Sumberg). These reports suggest that women and men share similar interests, but how these interact with other responsibilities through life, varies. The women also reported that the purpose of the cooperative for them was to stop them ‘falling down their occupational ladder’.

Women’s paid and unpaid labour: small family size and more work

Regardless of which family form dominates the African countryside, the continued outmigration of men from rural areas surely means that a reliance on family labour will no longer be a defining characteristic of family farms. However, the question of women’s labour must be addressed in any policies related to this family farming paradigm. It is widely accepted that women, along with other family members, contribute to food production for consumption, but at the same time, women bear the costs of social reproduction. The potential ‘costs’ to women, especially younger women, of increasing commercialisation of family farms in the context of reductions in unpaid family labour with no other interventions to soften the blow, go beyond social protection – for which again women are frequently being made responsible as the most obvious policy targets.

We might not expect to see these issues spelled out in FAO’s relatively brief definition of family farming. But it needs to be clear that while in general this declaration might be celebrated, it comes with obligations to take note of the way in which related policies will feed into existing, often entrenched ways of doing things that can place limits on the achievement of natural resource-related objectives, and result in even further disadvantages for women, especially younger women, and possibly for younger men.

Some conclusions

In an era when increased production and productivity for the market lie at the centre of rural development policy, it is always tempting to focus on directly-related interventions for achieving these objectives, scaling up, and so on.

For women, this might be to improve their access to a range of agricultural inputs, and supporting moves to ensure more inclusive land access arrangements rather than focusing on providing individual ownership rights. While gender-equitable land laws are on the books in many places, they are often subverted in practice.

But however valuable these interventions might be, access to public resources for, say, self-provisioning of water and fuel supplies might actually be the most valuable intervention – freeing up time for women especially, stimulating a range of economic activities not previously possible, improving health – possibly the most important benefit - but no doubt providing a range of other benefits, some of which might not be visible at present.

Finally, scattered through this blog post are points that suggest the need to reassess the way families are positioned here in small-scale farm production and related natural resources development and protection, in policy. Some of the significant shifts for women have been the increase in collective action for them over the last decade, some moves to change the regulations of cooperatives that have long led to the exclusion of women in particular (see Ladipo 1981), and the spread of farmer field schools and other learning modes.

It is now time to focus on other initiatives and to accommodate the diversity of institutional arrangements within which farming investments are being made, while being aware of the wider structures of gender and socio-economic inequality that must be continually questioned if sustainable benefits are to be seen.

Sylvia Chant (2003) reminds us that poverty is not just about incomes but about power, self-esteem and social legitimacy… and adopting a socially inclusive stance in service provision.

Not more of the same please!

References

 Chant, Sylvia (2003) ‘Female Household Headship and the Feminisation of Poverty; Facts, Fictions and Forward Strategies’ New Working Paper Series, Issue 9, London School of Economics, Gender Institute online

Jackson, C. (2007) Resolving Risk? Marriage and Creative Conjugality, Development and Change, 38(1): 107-129

Ladipo, Patricia (1981) Developing women's cooperatives: An experiment in rural Nigeria, Journal of Development Studies, 17(3): 123-136: DOI: 10.1080/00220388108421802

Ladipo, P., (1991) Looking beyond the farm for gender issues in FSRE, Journal
For Farming Systems Research, Vol. 2(2)2: 39-50

O'laughlin, Bridget (1998) Missing men? The debate over rural poverty and women-headed households in Southern Africa, Journal of Peasant Studies, 25(2): 1-48

Leach, Melissa (2007) Earth Mother Myths and other Ecofeminist Fables: How a strategic notion rose and fell, Development and Change, 38(1): 67-85

Prügl, Eliazabeth, Razavi, Shahra and Reysoo, Fenneke (2013) ‘Gender and Agriculture after Neoliberalism’, Report of a workshop organized by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) 19–20 July 2012, Villa Rigot, Geneva.

Razavi, S. (2009) Engendering the Political Economy of Agrarian Change, Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(1): 197–226

Schroeder, R.A. (1993) Shady practice: gender and the political ecology of resource stabilization in Gambian gardens/orchards, Economic Geography: 349-365

Schroeder, R. (1996) “Gone to their Second Husbands”: Marital Metaphors and Conjugal Contracts in The Gambia’s Female Garden Sector, Canadian Journal of African Studies 30(1):69–97

Thebe, Vusilizwe (2014) New Social Formations, Livelihood Transition, and Food Insecurity in Worker–Peasant Communities, Journal of Developing Societies 30(1): 1–23

Thebe, Vusilizwe and Rakotje, Mapepe F (2013) Land Strategies and Livelihood Dynamics in Peri-urban Communities: Challenges to Land and Agricultural Policy in Lesotho, African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00020184.2013.851468

Whitehead, A. and Kabeer, N. (2001) ‘Living with uncertainty: Gender, livelihoods and pro-poor growth in rural sub-Saharan Africa’, IDS Working Paper No. 134, Brighton: Institute for Development Studies.

Women and climate change: another special relationship?

By Christine Okali

Fishing community members, Zambia from
theworldfishcenter's Flickr photostream (by-nc-nd)

Agricultural and rural development policy has a problem with gender relations. Despite the prominence of the terms ‘gender’, ‘gender dimension’ and ‘gender sensitive’, it is women – and not the broader suite of gender relations – that most frequently appear in agricultural and rural development policy.

Pushed to become more ‘gender sensitive’, these policies increasingly paint a picture of African women involved in agriculture as isolated economic actors.

According to this stereotype, women are poor, vulnerable subsistence food producers without agency; they’re also selfless, caring and reliable.

It is commonly argued that women undertake the bulk of the work in agriculture, fisheries and livestock keeping, and as a consequence are particularly knowledgeable about the natural resource base. This is the basis of the idea that African rural women have a special relationship with the natural environment. It is often suggested that rural women can act and take decisions independently – and indeed, increase their agricultural productivity and engage with new market opportunities – as long as they are given adequate external support.

Women and climate

After ‘women and agriculture’, ‘women and the environment’, ‘women and biodiversity’ and the like, we should perhaps not be surprised that the spotlight has now moved to ‘women and climate change’.

In general, the suggestion is that women are more vulnerable than men to climate change because of their greater dependence on natural resources, and their (often) indirect and informal claims over these resources. Including women in climate change programmes (e.g. REDD+) is expected to help them to achieve food and nutrition security through increased productivity but also through income gained from sales of environmental credits they may gain from adopting carbon-saving practices.[1]

As a consequence, their status in their families and communities, or at least in their development groups, will be enhanced. The term ‘empowerment’ and (especially more recently) ‘economic empowerment’ is used to describe both their (new?) decision making power, and this improved status.

Where do the narratives come from?

The special relationship between gender (read: women) and climate change is constructed from well-established narratives linking gender and environment on the one hand, and gender and agriculture on the other. These narratives are themselves highly problematic: nevertheless they have proved to be highly resilient and continue to influence policy in these domains.

In compounding these narratives, long and complex chains of explanations that rely on assumptions and claims that can hardly be demonstrated, are created.

We might be inclined to dismiss these as simple political constructs even though they suggest that social and related institutional change is a straightforward, if not linear, process. However, if they fit the agenda of development agencies, they are likely to be repeated, and used to include women instrumentally in agency programmes simply to achieve international, national and internal targets.

Specifically, in terms of the way in which gender issues are defined, and addressed in projects (i.e. project ‘entry points’ determined and used), it is evidence derived from sex-disaggregated data that is used. Invariably these data have shown that women work longer hours on farms than men, and exercise less control over land, labour, credit in addition to other production resources than men, and over the output itself. These differences between individual women and men (frequently referred to as 'gaps') are interpreted as unfair, disadvantage women by limiting their productive capacity.

The problem with gender 'gaps'

But are these conclusions valid? Do they rely on an overly simple interpretation of the data that, taken in isolation from other information about the lives of the men and women concerned, suggests unfairness and inequity? Do they reliably reflect ‘work’ undertaken, or do they ignore other kinds of ‘work’? (Jackson 2007; Jackson and Palmer-Jones[2]) Do individual men have any more ‘control’ over land than individual women? Are we over-stating the level of control that individuals in many situations in rural Africa have over resources? What are the constraints on women and on men that limit their agricultural productivity?

In asking questions such as these, I am suggesting that these sex-disaggregated data in themselves tell us little about reality. They support a focus on individual lives and livelihoods, and take us down pathways that homogenise gender discourse and avenues for transformative change.

A lesson: complex relationships

It is time to re-socialise gender policies. For real progress to be made towards gender equity and transforming gender relations across a range of institutions, policies must build on a more realistic understanding of the lives of women and men and their complex and changing relationships.
In small-scale fisheries, for example, this means acknowledging gender relations between “boat owners, fish processors and sellers who are also wives, husbands, community members, and co-workers”[3], as one FAO report puts it; and looking at the role of social norms and values in constraining (or, in some cases, supporting) behavioural change and limiting the resilience of many women, but also of many men.

Narrowly framed strategies are not ideal starting points for adapting to change. Projects with such strategies are unlikely to enhance the capacity of, for instance, small-scale fishing communities to adapt to climate change. A strategy which promotes gender-aware solutions that are fish-specific, focused especially on women characterised as vulnerable – and which ignores the existing evidence of the capacity of individuals and communities involved in fisheries to deal with livelihood threats – is unlikely to succeed.

What is the alternative?

Strategies will have more chance of success if they take into account both the complexity of livelihoods, and the social and economic dynamics, in small-scale fishing communities. They should also consider some related entry points into policy: for example, livelihood security in fisheries, gender-related vulnerabilities, and the ability of men and women together and/or separately to adapt to changes in their environment.

In relation to placing rural women centrally in climate change policy, two key questions for policy might be:

1. Given the importance of wider social relations in the lives of individuals, can the focus be on women alone?
2. What trade-offs are women likely to have to make with others in order to participate in policies designed to meet their needs (not necessarily their interests); and for their participation to benefit them?

Christine Okali convenes the Gender and Social Difference theme of Future Agricultures. This post first appeared on the Future Agricultures blog.

Further reading

• Okali, C. and Naess, L.O. (2013) Making Sense of Gender, Climate Change and Agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa Working Paper 57

 

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References

[1] The complexity of these arrangements on the ground is detailed by Joanes Atela in a recent study of the Kenya Agricultural Carbon Project. The international finance arrangements for these exchanges between local populations and international carbon markets are detailed in the report BioCarbon Fund Experience; Insights from Afforestation and Reforestation Clean Development Mechanism Projects, by the Carbon Finance Unit of the World Bank.
[2] Palmer-Jones, Richard and Jackson, Cecile, 1997. ‘Work Intensity, Gender and Sustainable Development’ Food Policy, 22(1): 39-62 and Jackson, Cecile, 2000, 'Men at work', The European Journal o Development Research, 12:2, 1 - 22
[3] FAO. 2006. Gender policies for responsible fisheries – Policies to support gender equity and livelihoods in small-scale fisheries – available from the FAO website

World Water Day 2013: What’s missing in MDG7 for women and girls?

By Lyla Mehta

Access to water and sanitation for all is central to achieving global justice for women and girls. 780 million people still lack access to drinking water, and sanitation remains seriously off track with 2.5 billion people lacking access to improved sanitation. Better access to water and sanitation facilities can reduce poverty and provide immediate health benefits for women and girls as well as better educational and economic opportunities and life chances. As debates on the MDGs – and what comes after them - abound, World Water Day 2013 offers a timely opportunity to look at the MDG goal on water and sanitation and what it means for gender justice.

Why do Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Matter?
Excess water in the household can be used by women for their kitchen gardens and can provide additional nutrition to diets, especially to children. Women and girls gain privacy and dignity through proper sanitation and menstrual hygiene facilities. It is now well known that poor sanitation facilities in schools prevent girls from attending school, especially during menstruation. Girls are also overburdened by time-consuming water collection activities. The lack of sanitation facilities exposes women and girls to violence and rape.

Water and Sanitation Targets: Achievements and barriers
Although the Millennium Declaration, adopted by 189 countries, was originally committed to issues concerning social justice and human rights, in reality the process that unfolded has largely been about tracking goals, targets and abstract numbers. This is also the case in water and sanitation where global declarations and targets often do not match with the on-the-ground realities of poor women and girls where at the local level a politics of power and control shape outcomes for poor people, especially poor women and girls.

Inadequate indicators and definitions
In March 2012, the world had met the water MDG of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, well in advance of the 2015 deadline. This was a cause for celebration. However, the measurement of progress is by averages, which say little about regional variations and variations between socio-economic groups or by gender. Largely, the poor in remote rural areas and informal urban settlements have been by-passed but they are the most deserving.

The MDG definition of ‘improved’ sources does nothing to address issues concerning water quality and issues concerning operation and maintenance of the service. It does not acknowledge the time taken for water collection activities and the acceptable distance walked is up to one kilometre!  Cultural norms dictate that women and girls can spend between three minutes and three hours per day collecting water.  (Is it right for rural women and girls to be spending so much time collecting water in the 21st century?) In order to avoid the long trudge, women and girls often compromise and may collect water from sources that are less clean which can have knock on effects on their health and that of their family. 

Gender blindness has led to the MDGs ignoring critical issues relating to women’s interests at both macro and micro levels, including reproductive and sexual rights, and the importance of women’s access to land and productive water. The monitoring agencies all lack proper sex-disaggregated data making it impossible to monitor progress or devise gender sensitive policies. Data is essential if gender is considered to have any importance – to literally ‘count’.

Sanitation remains off track and there has been a tendency to ignore critical issues concerning sustainability. Constructing toilets does not ensure that they will be used, given prevailing socio-cultural norms and values. It is well known that in some parts of Africa, daughters-in-law will not use the same toilets as elder men and thus may require a separate facility. The targets and rewards systems that accompany sanitation programmes can often end up being a number counting exercise without ensuring long-term sustainability.

Looking forward
Even though water and sanitation were recognised as basic human rights in 2010 there is a considerable gap between rights talk and rights practice. Governments may not prioritise their national governments’ global commitments. Women’s participation in decision-making processes is often low and men continue to hold powerful positions in sector.  Women’s presence is often a requirement of the implementing agency but it can often be tokenistic or women and girls are made to devote their voluntary labour rather than have any clear influence or develop particular skills. Gender and other markers of identities mould allocation and access among users. In India, lower caste women (Dalits) continue to be considered ‘impure’ and are excluded from participating in programmes and indeed in using shared facilities. Disabled women all over the world are often doubly disadvantaged.  Accountability mechanisms for excluded women to demand their rights are weak throughout the world.

Current water and sanitation indicators to monitor progress are inadequate. They ignore gender dynamics, rights, equality, sustainability and equity concerns as well as regional variations.  It is encouraging that the post-2015 consultations and different working groups are focussing on these issues. There are also discussions to address intra-household inequality through disaggregating data by gender, age, health status, disability. Whether these issues stay on the agenda until the very end, is of course, up for grabs.

If human rights are included, new targets and indicators will also be set but equality can be  difficult to quantify. The new water and sanitation regime must avoid only focussing on the process of numbers and targets for these don’t capture the diversity of women’s choices and constraints and tell us little of local dynamics. Exclusion needs to be tackled head-on rather than to stop at the low-hanging fruit. Instead of asking who has gained access, we need to ask: who doesn’t have access and why? The strength of global action now needs to be measured in terms of rights, justice, inclusion and sustainability, as well as awareness of local contexts. This includes both local level action to higher-level ‘political will’ whilst drawing on and addressing the perspectives and interests of the poorest and most marginalised women.
This blog is based on a paper presented by Lyla Mehta at the 57th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women, New York, 6 March 2013.

Related links:
Commission on the Status of Women Session - including webcast
Shit Matters: The Potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation
STEPS Centre Water Domain